I just finished building this small thing. My previous system was a "standard" system with a P182, E8400 etc but I never really needed that much power. As long as I can decode 1080p x264 I'm pretty happy. I seldom play games and when I do it's Half-Life 2 or older stuff.

Silence and low power consumption is important to me and small size and portability is always nice. This system idles at ~52W AC compared to my previous Intel based system that idled at ~69W. Not a very significant difference but still.

It was quite easy to build in the NSK1380. I built a similar system in a NSK3480 not long ago and that case seemed smaller and more cramped. The NSK1380 is much more open.

I had to do some dremel work to the drive bay to make room for the Minja. Luckily the Minja is short enough for the DVD-RW to fit, a few mm more and I would probably have to mod the case of the optical drive or skip the drive all together.
Fitting the S1 was also very close, not much room to spare.

My SSD and HDD are zip tied to the front of the case. I'm not too proud of that sloppy installation but couldn't think of any other way. I wish the HDD was more suspended from the case. That foam doesn't completely stop the vibrations from the disk.

The NSK1380 is a very nice little case and I strongly recommend it.

edit: Thought I might add a list of the hardware. It's listed in my signature at the moment, but that might change in the future.

I'm in love with the fact, that you run this off a PicoPSU! Seriously, any PC that cannot run off a PicoPSU 120 is overkill.

It's hard to see from the pictures, but this runs off a single fan, right?? By the way, where is the 3.5" HDD supposed to sit (of course I'm assuming that Antec didn't plan on users to zip-tie their drives to the case wall... )?

Yes, it's a single Slipstream 800RPM. And by default there is actually room for three 3.5" HDDs, one horizontal under the 5.25" bay and two vertical to either side. With the Minja and the S1 in there all three became unusable.

I haven't actually tried to play any games yet. I'm waiting for a working version of the Radeon BIOS Editor which at the moment has some problems with my Sapphire 4670. I plan to underclock and undervolt the card slightly just to be sure. It should work ok anyway really, I measured the load to about 117W AC max during 3DMark06 before I switched from the original Antec PSU (lying beside the case, open side) to the PicoPSU, and that was with the CPU at stock speed and voltage.

Actually I think you could have avoided cutting up the drive cage. I remember you could pull off the heatpipe caps at the top on the original Ninja. I haven't see anyone do it with the Mini Ninja, but it's worth a try.

Not meaning to sound patronising or anything, but putting together such a mini PC isn't easy for a first build. You'll need plenty of advice and perhaps some modding of parts/case to make everything fit.

Nice to see another sff cube build. I'm running one also inspired by AuraAllan, though not as cleen. With a Pico120, and a 220W brick I've also been able to power a decent system-
Intel Q9400 @ 3.0ghz
HD3870
1HDD
no ODD
2x2gb ram
6 USB devices

Uses ~115W under CPU load. Pico is quite versitile, as are 12v bricks.

Here's another variant on a config for this case and has the advantage of fitting a decent quiet drive setup.

I've put in a Mini ITX board with a Samsung 1TB drive in a GrowUpJapan box. The box sits vertically on foam on the left side of the case held in place by some trusty elastic tied through slots in the top & bottom of the case. Works just fine. There's enough room left for the box by using the Mini ITX mobo.

I don't have a CD unit but use a flash drive for installs. Runs from a 90W pico and uses about 45W. Currently I have a PCI Gigabit NIC addin card.

Only 1 fan that blows inwards through the original PSU fan grill with a Zalman fanmate stuck on the back of the case.

I use this as a 24/7 music server running Ubuntu 8.04 Server.

Next year I'll see if I can get a more powerful config to fit and may use this case as a main PC.

Actually, you could probably fit a full size ninja in there for lower temps as well, but that's just being anal.

Actually I used a Ninja for a while, but my friend needed it back. Have one still lying about but it's one of the first revision and I have only the S775 assembly parts. So there's room for a Ninja at least. But the Minja is doing it's job well.

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